Stephen Lapthisophon is more than a little intrigued with perceptions of ugliness and beauty, one of several themes he pursues in his debut solo exhibition, which opens Sunday at the Dallas Museum of Art.

It’s the latest installment of the Concentrations series that focuses on “internationally emerging and underrepresented artists.”

Lapthisophon, who is legally blind, said he once read an essay that closed with the line, “Beauty is an ugly thing.”

“There is a beauty in ugly things,” he said at Thursday’s media preview. “At times, beauty tortures us, sort of gets in your soul and haunts you. It’s that ugly thing that kind of pushes through at you. You can’t get it out of your head. So, there’s a certain way that beauty is an ugly thing.”

How we define beauty or ugliness “is very much in the show,” he says. “How we decide what’s appropriate and right and valuable.”

Lapthisophon is a Dallas artist whom DMA director Maxwell Anderson says “lives among the ghosts of the past …. He feeds off of it, he rebels against it.”

Lapthisophon mourns the fact that we live “in a time that disavows the past, doesn’t want to think about the past, as though we’re hurtling toward the future all the time. I think that we are only grounded in the past. We only know ourselves through embracing it. I think we lose something when we renounce the past,” or dismiss as ugly that which is beautiful.

The Aga Khan Museum that opens next year in Toronto will be the first in North America “devoted to Islamic arts and cultures.” The museum’s collection includes more than 1,000 “celebrated art objects acquired by his Highness the Aga Khan and his family.”

Some of the key pieces from the collection will arrive in North Texas on Friday, when its “Enlightened Encounters” tour opens a monthlong run. School groups and community leaders have been invited to see the pieces at the Ismaili Jamatkhana in Plano. The email address is lcc@usaji.org.

The highlight of the exhibition is an illustrated manuscript of Nasir’s Ethics. The manuscript, copied around 1590 in the court workshops of the Mughai Emperor Akbar the Great, examines the “practical philosophy” of Nasir’s Ethics, “which addresses a broad range of concepts from justice and love to ideas about educating children and good government.”

Museum volunteer Samina Hooda says that Nasir “was inspired by Aristotle and Plato and the philosophers of his time.” He sought to address “the ways to live a community life. It is considered to be a significant ethical text in the medieval Islamic world.” Museum officials are inviting numerous community leaders to a brunch in Las Colinas, among them Anderson, who last December appointed Sabiha Al Khemir the DMA’s first senior adviser of Islamic art and organizing curator of “Nur: Light in Art and Science From the Islamic World,” which will be on view exclusively in the U.S. at the DMA beginning in March.

Islamic art is all about telling stories, and so is the new show at 500X Gallery, 500 Exposition Ave. in Dallas, not far from Fair Park. “Return to Narrative” opens with a reception Saturday night and features the work of Colette Copeland, Michael Francis, Chancellor Page and Giovanni Valderas, whose respective narratives “examine issues surrounding identity, history and culture.”

Vernon Fisher and Robyn O’Neil open new shows Saturday night at Talley Dunn Gallery. Fisher’s show is heavy on pop culture and literary allusions.

Expect to see images of Jerry Lewis, Krusty the Clown, Daffy Duck and Woody Woodpecker.

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About Michael Granberry

As a Dallas native, Michael has been particularly intrigued by the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, primarily its effect on the psyche of his hometown, and has written award-winning stories on the topic. He was a sixth-grader in Dallas when the assassination occurred. Several classmates were the children of either key eyewitnesses or law enforcement officers whose involvement and/or testimony became critical. He has worked in LA and Washingon, D.C. During his time at The News, he has profiled actresses Renee Zellweger and Morgan Fairchild, brother-actors Owen and Luke Wilson, playwright Beth Henley, CBS newsman Scott Pelley, hockey great Brett Hull and Dallas Cowboys Daryl Johnston and Dat Nguyen, who, at the time, was the only Vietnamese player in the National Football League.

Hometown: Dallas

Education: Michael received a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from Southern Methodist University, class of 1974.